FERNEL, Jean.

De abditis rerum causis libri duo.

Venice, Andrea Arrivabeni, 1550. Small 8vo, ff. [20], pp. 310 (recte 312), with woodcut printer's device on title; a nice copy in contemporary limp vellum; vellum soiled, cords at front broken; contemporary ownership inscription on title of Syl(vius) Faber, other inscription at head of title, errata corrected in a neat hand and pagination corrected, later armorial book-plate on front end-paper. Second edition of Fernel's celebrated Dialogue (first Paris 1548) 'On the hidden causes of things.' The book seeks to answer Hippocrates' question, 'Is there anything supernatural in disease?' In answering it Fernel fires a broadside against astrology in medicine. 'Fernel was an observer. Versed more than most men in the stars as data for astrology, and versed, as he became, in the signs and vicissitudes of disease, he used his own first-hand observation to check the supposed agreement between the behaviour of the stars and the facts of the sick room ... Fernel said simply that [astrology] does not speak truly about disease and other things, and he parted company with it. For him, with his austerity of character, and his devotion to medicine, that was enough ... The 'Dialogue' is a very human document. It takes us into its confidence on a number of vexed questions. It is intimate enough with us to make us wonder what exactly were the hesitations its author had about its publication ... The 'Dialogue' secured a wide audience early, and it retained readers for several generations' (Sherrington pp. 40 & 52-53).This is a fine example of sixteenth-century Venetian book production, 'well printed on good paper' as Sherrington has it. The book is of some rarity. Sherrington knew of only five copies of the first edition, only one in the British Isles (Aberdeen University), and but four of the second edition, none of them in the British Isles. There is still no copy of the first edition recorded in any North American library, although OCLC locates seven copies of this second edition: UCLA, New York Academy of Medicine, Harvard (Countway and Houghton), National Library of Medicine, Chicago and Rochester Universities. The earliest edition in Wellcome is 1560, in Bird 1592, in Heirs of Hippocrates 1581, in Waller 1644.Durling 1478; Sherrington 18.F2.

• GBP 1,200.00 > otras divisas
• nº de pedido: SP153

• librero: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)